I do like a challenge!

I find the repetitive stuff in building model railway items the hardest just from a motivational point of view. I guess I get bored easily and need to be challenged to keep me interested.

This one was certainly a challenge! In more ways than one as it turned out.

The commission was to make an model of an original Spooner bogie to 16mm scale. The first challenge was converting ancient blue prints that didn’t tell you all the information into a modern CAD model. Only heavily modified descendants of the original Spooner bogie exist so looking at them only helped with clues rather than providing something that could be copied. At the very least they have been modified to include brake gear which wasn’t even an optional extra on the original. There have been changes to the suspension as well over the years.

I use SolidWorks for my CAD so a full solid model was created in the CAD comprising of many individual components then put together in an assembly drawing to see if it all fitted together.

Now here’s a thing. When drawing a pen and ink blue print you can draw a line any length you like and write a dimension on it and no one says a thing. (well, the bloke on the shop floor might call you names but then he’ll just build it how he’s always built it.) 3D CAD wants the dimensions , wants them to be right and gets cross with you if they are not. Often it refuses to go any further until you do get them right, or at least work out a lie that its happy with.

Now the thing with the Spooner Bogie is that it has a spherical centre and then a secondary suspension arrangement that takes some of the weight off the centre with a sort of spring in a cartridge arrangement which bears on castings on the inside of the frames.

Sorting the design out was the first challenge, then it was on to making it. Many of the parts were to be 3D printed on my new 3D printer. Learning to use that was the second challenge as this was the first real job to be done on it. It was quite a steep learning curve with more than one false start whilst the boundaries of what is possible were tested.

My printer is a Formlabs Form 2, a proper production machine rather than a hobby machine, and probably the closest you can get to a desktop printer at the moment.

Its still not straightforward with the prints having to be cleaned and then cured but it us developed to the point where its a process in which you don’t have to touch the resin or the wash. Its still messy with uncured resin and buckets of Propanol swilling about.

Eventually the process produced a load of printed parts to which then had to be added metallic parts and then the whole thing assembled. Trying to turn and thread 14BA suspension bolts generated some poor language!

Also practical assembly resulted in some mods and some reprints.

Eventually it all went together. It was then painted and weathered and a bit of display track made for it.

Just a quick note on weathering. It’s weathered to show up the details and to mimic the way it catches the light. I was asked if I was going to paint it black just as I finished it. I was not impressed! On the other hand if I had painted it gloss black I could have missed half the details off as they wouldn’t be seen.

Anyway, here are two pictures of the finished item. You decide if it came out alright

Just the other day I received some pictures that I have to share with you.

These are some photos sent to me by one of my Australian Customers, Roger Hill, and show his model of a Darjeeling B Class built from an EDM Models kit. He’s made a superb job of it and its great to see a completed model. So often I send kits out and then never hear of them again. Statistics suggest a significant number end up unbuilt in a cupboard so its great to see a finished one.

Better still its a prize winner having gained first place for steam loco’s at the 2019 Australian Narrow Gauge Convention.

The astute amongst you will not there are two certificates. The second is a First Place for Photography – Prototype won with this shot.

This will be the tale of the Brymston Railroad and its allied companies Brymston Mining, The Brymston Lumber Co and any other subsidiaries that come to light.

The Brymston RR is a 3ft gauge line built and operated for the mining and lumber concerns with extensive trackage. It also acts as a common carrier on some parts of its route.

One day the full history of the line may get written but for now any similarity with The Brimston Railroad in Tennessee is purely coincidental.

The first section of this tale is really a second telling. The first version was told on the NGRM online forum and copied to some other places too. After a while I decided to re-tell the tale in my own blog and then copy extracts to the various forums where comments and interactions would be encouraged. So, on with the catch up.Continue reading →

I volunteered to do a demo at the 7mm NGA Bradford Open Day that is on the 10th November 2018 and I asked for suggestions as to what it should be. Discounting the idea of making a prawn curry (not a great fan of prawns) I was already thinking lining of models when this was suggested.

I have an NGG16 to paint like 138 above and its all assembled and going to be a bit of a bugger to do. It’s a while since I did any lining so some practice might be a good idea.

Within just weeks of the last cultural exchange a further opportunity presented itself with the visit of an FR engine to the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway at Woody Bay.

Eight years ago, the Festiniog Railway completed the replica of the last Manning Wardle 2-6-2 Lew and named it Lyd following the three letter rivers theme. This year the L&B completed a replica of the original Baldwin engine Lyn and the L&B Autumn Gala was to be the first time two L&B engines would be seen together since 1935.

I got to go as one of the crew of Lyd going along a few days earlier to get my feet under the table and help with the preps doing things like servicing the axle boxes on little used DZ wagons that were going to get a lot of use over the weekend.

Those of you who follow my ramblings on this blog will have worked out that Panda (Andy Young) and I are good mates and have been messing about with model trains and steam engines together for years. Panda prefers the sedate life of the Talyllyn Railway for his steam fix whilst I get mine at the more manic Festiniog. Every couple of years we manage a bit of a swap or, as we call it, a cultural exchange in which he tries to broaden my horizons and I narrow his. Continue reading →

There has been a lot of secretive work going on here that, whilst I have leaked snippets, I have had to keep mostly to myself. With the secrecy done with I can reveal a little more. Since the beginning of the year I have been working on a presentation model of Festiniog Railway Observation coach 102 as a commission to be presented to the retiring Carriage Works Manager at Boston Lodge Works.

Just to make life tricky a) there are no drawings of 102 despite it being a pretty recent build and b) the font of all knowledge is also the planned recipient, so I could hardly do my usual walk into the carriage works and go, “ere Norm tell me all about 102”. Some walking on eggshells and pussy footing around was required.

102 pulled out by Moelwyn

Luckily, I am able to pull some strings having been volunteer for 40 years. A word with the Loco Manager got the coach moved in the Christmas shunt to be accessible. Just on one end of a stored set rather than in the middle was what I hoped for, but Phil played a blinder with it spending Christmas and New Year on the centre road of the new Heritage Shed with diesel Moelwyn attached. Continue reading →

Sorry, but this isn’t a cheerful happy post full of photographs of steam engines I get to play with (but one of those is on the cards). No, this is a post telling you about the NG Trains website and opening up to discussion some of the ideas I have for it.

All other posts I have done on the blog I have left online but I think this one I may only leave here for a week or so as it’ll stop being topical quite quickly.

Today’s Site – bit of history

My website was started in the days when you listened to modems beeping and burbling to themselves and you went for a brew whilst stuff uploaded. It was created in FrontPage before FrontPage became FrontPage 2000 which gives you an idea of the date. Both of those programs are long gone and its now done in Expression Web, newer but still obsolete.

In techno babble it’s a fixed page format with no dynamic searching and being close to 20 years old it’s full of accumulated crap. It has no capability to show stock levels and cannot be linked to our current stock database.

When we started we had no stock database or stock control because I knew what we had and where everything was. That didn’t last! In 2013 I got an EPOS system That has the stock codes, bar codes and stock levels. If I sell you something at a show the stock level is reduced. When at home and I process a web sale I have to also do that sale in the POS system and, if I remember, reduce the stock on the website.

I guess what I am telling you is the old way has to go and that is not negotiable but the question is what to change to.

An Uncomfortable Confession.

For reasons I will explain whatever replaces the current site it has to be cleverer than the average simple site. It was beyond me, so I sought help via my go to IT helper. That generated a lot of hot air, cost money for a trip to London and a meeting room. [not quite true, I found a use for my IET membership – free use of a meeting room – ironically at the ImechE because the IET had got the builders in]. What it didn’t do was create the website the technowiz promised.

I look back now and kick myself, but I then went to another recommended source which showed a lot of promise and was well on the way until a change of personnel at the developer (a change of role actually) gave a muppet more power than he should have had and convinced him of abilities he didn’t have. It went on for a while but overall it resulted in no website, a lot of money I won’t see again and a complete lack of trust in anyone else to do it for me.

Having someone else do it always sat poorly with my inner control freak, but I was convinced by others that I needed to delegate and spread the load. CLEARLY, I WAS RIGHT AND THEY WERE WRONG! The control freak is back in charge, but the result has been nothing happening. Until now!

So, What Now.

There are many options of the “ecommerce site in a flash” type systems out there but they won’t really cut it. They don’t integrate with or provide their own POS system, can’t do pre-orders, can’t do subscriptions, can’t do variable page formats by product group. The clincher is that they are really aimed at selling large quantities of a few products where NG Trains is really about selling a few of a lot of products.

I have been looking at a lot of options but then I narrowed it down to three to have a closer look at Prestashop, Open Cart and the one I think I have settled on, WooCommerce. Notwithstanding its stupid name, it seems to have all the features I want.

I say think I have settled on because all three of these have one flaw to the new starter. In all of them the starter site is free but to call it basic is generous. Adding formats and functionality is achieved by purchasing modules and the problem with this is that the blurb promises much but you can only really find out if it does what you want by handing over the dosh.

Your Opinion Matters……..

………Although I might end up ignoring you now that the control freak has reasserted himself.

The lack of progress is down to a few things: –

Learning a new system is pretty daunting. One of the reasons the current set up has lasted was that I knew its ins and outs.

To do it all in one hit is such a big task that the result is nothing gets done.

There is a load of stuff that isn’t on the website. You’ll have seen the PSC castings at shows but there’s a whole load of other stuff that neither goes to shows or is on the web.

Here’s the plan then.

Currently I own the domains www.ngtrains.com and www.ngtrains.co.uk. If you try the latter it just forwards you to the former. The suggestion is to split them and start the new site on .co.uk whilst the existing site continues on .com.

The new site would start life as the parts and castings site adding items that aren’t on the current one.

This would allow me to set up the new site and learn how to work it.

As it developed other `parts’ type stuff would move from the old to the new

There would come a point where, once I am happy with it, there would be a push to move everything to the new site at which point it would revert to one domain forwarding to the other

So what are the issues with this?

The upside for me is that it gets round the “too big a job” blockage in the development progress and allows me to build my skills.

The down side is that its possible that to buy a range of items you may have to place two orders, one on each site.

I expect I will get to a point fairly quickly where the two site thing gets inconvenient enough for me to get on with the big push but the alternative at the moment seems to be nothing continuing to happen.

What is Beamish some will inevitably ask. Put simply, if you don’t know, it’s the one museum you really must visit, and you should plan on staying at least a couple of days.

It’s an open-air museum featuring towns and scenes from the North. One slogan is “bringing the past to life” although this looked a little odd in the back of the period hearse! The large site features a two-mile circular roadway and tram line around which you will find many features Continue reading →

It’s been awhile since my last blog post, due to too many things to do like impending GDPR Rules (if you don’t know what that is think yourself lucky) and new websites for EDM Models. I have managed to keep up with the new photography interest and I’ll just visit the latest efforts in this post and then leave it to get back to trains.

Clare and I have continued with our BBC set topic challenge and I also went on a guided night photography walk around York which apart from being freezing was very interesting and also helped meet that weeks challenge topic which was `Star’ so this picture of the entrance to The Star Inn did it. It was a 30+ second exposure and believe it or not someone came out of The Star, walked through the picture and stood at my side chatting but managed not to appear in the image! Continue reading →